Cass Scenic Railroad

The Inter-Mountain
June 17, 1988

Festival Opens Today

Cass Holds Rich Place In W. Va.'s 125 Years

Editor's Note: The Cass Railroad
Festival opening today marks the 25th
annsiversary [sic] of the town of Cass and
the 125th birthday of the state of West
Virginia. The following article about
the early history of Cass has been
edited from an article by Mark Smith
and Dr. George Deike.

Cass's history follows the evolution
of several lumbering operations that
populated this Pocahontas County
valley under the auspices of the West
Virginia Pulp and Paper Company.
The sawmill in Cass, victimized by
fire and now in ruins, was a symbol of
the driving economic force in this
region until the middle of this century.

John Killoran in his book, Cass Collection,
wrote that the mill operation
was enormous during its heyday of
1922 to 1935. It ran two 11-hour shifts
six days per week, cutting 125,000
board feet of lumber each shift - an
impressive million and a half feet of
lumber per week. The Cass mill also
had drying kilns using 11 miles of
steam pipe to dry 360,000 board feet of
lumber on each run.

The adjoining planing mill was
three stories high, measuring 96 by
224 feet. Massive elevators carried up
to 5,000 feet of lumber to the separate
floors and machines. Some flooring
machines were so big that it took 15
men to operate them. Two resaws,
large surfacing machines that finished
all four sides of a board in one
operation, could accommodate
boards up to 35 feet long.

Dr. Roy Clarkson, in Tumult on the
Mountain, estimated that in 40 years,
the Cass mill and the mill at nearby
Spruce turned more than 2.25 billion
feet of timber into pulp or lumber.
Each morning the C&0 dispatched a
44-car pulpwood train to the paper
mill at Covington, Virginia. At its
peak, West Virginia Pulp and Paper
employed approximately 3,000 men.
In an average week, six to 10 carloads
of food and supplies traveled over the
railroad to 12 logging camps. Indeed,
the ruined mill is a symbol and is a
reminder of a past resplendent with
human achievement. But the story of
the mills is also a story of the rails
that linked the mills with the timber in
the nearby mountains.

By the turn of the century,
lumbermen eyeing the large tracts of
virgin timber on both sides of Cheat
fountain west of Cass decided to
route the raw timber east through a
mountain gap. An interchange between
the Greenbrier and Elk River
Railroad at Cass and the C&O was
most economical, but it called for the
difficult task of building a mountain
railroad.

In 1900, Samuel Slaymaker, a Pennsylvanian,
set up a construction camp
at the mouth of Leatherbark Creek,
the present site of the Cass railroad
shops. He and his men pushed the
rails up Leatherbark Creek, gaining
altitude by constructing switchbacks.
A camp named Spruce was established
more than halfway up the mountain
with no access except by rail.

In about 1904, more than a mile of
track was built from Old Spruce to a
new town on Shavers Fork of Cheat
River, also called Spruce. At an
altitude of 3,853 feet, Spruce became
the highest town in the eastern United
States. From there, loggers gained
access to vast acreage of timber. The
track ran another 35 miles west and
north to the town of Bergoo and north
65 miles to Cheat Junction, where it
interchanged with the Western
Maryland Railroad. Spruce became
the hub of the rail empire. The main
lines, Cass to Spruce, Spruce to
Bergoo, and Spruce to Cheat Junction,
were 82 miles long. During the 1920's
many miles of branch lines were built,
but because of frequent adding and
discarding of lines, not all 250 total
miles of track were in use at one time.

At Spruce, a large pulp and peeling
mill was constructed. Billions of
board feet passed through Spruce and
eventually went over the mountains
behind big Shay locomotives.

After 1905 the railroad went through
a succession of name changes. The
Greenbner & Elk River became the
Greenbrier, Elk & Valley Railroad in
1909, only to become the Greenbrier,
Cheat & Elk Railroad (GC&E) in 1910.
This quick succession of names
reflects the early permutation so
characteristic of a young and booming
logging empire.

Actually, these name changes are
misleading because West Virginia
Pulp and Paper (WVP&P) owned and
operated the entire lumber operation
from its beginnings. The original
lumber company was West Virginia
Spruce Lumber Company, set up by
West Virginia Pulp and Paper to
develop the Cass property. (WVP&P)
bought its own West Virginia Spruce
operation in 1910, the year the
railraod [sic] also became a common carrier.

In 1927, The Greenbrier, Cheat and
Elk Railroad merged with the
Western Maryland Railroad; long log
trains still rumbled along their old
routes but now in the company of
massive Western Maryland
locomatives [sic] pulling coal trains. On
the tortuous Elk River branch, WM
used up to 10 locomotives per train to
contend with three percent grades
and five-to-six degree curves.

____ began to die
with declining availability of pulp
logs. The peeling mill ceased operations
in 1925. By 1945, the town was an
isolated helper station on the Western
Maryland line. After World War II,
helpers were discontinued and Spruce
became a ghost town. Today, all that
remains is crumbling concrete slabs,
rubble and a single railroad track, a
point of interest for touring all-terrain
bicyclists.

By 1940, the Cass mill production
began to slide. First-growth virgin
timber had been cut, and most of the
pulp was gone. West Virginia Pulp &
Paper Co. was now Westvaco, a
world-wide paper manufacturer that
was phasing out sawmill production.
The company sold the sawmill at Cass
in 1942 to Edwin Mower.

Mower Lumber Co. planned to cut
second-growth timber on the Cass
side of Cheat Mountain. Tracks were
relaid into old logging areas. Huge
steam skidding machines were rigged
to the hillsides and knobs, bringing
logs to the rail line. But second-
growth could not feed the mighty mill
for long. By 1950, the sawmill worked
only one shift. The big four-truck Shay
engines languished on sidelines while
three worn and tired 70-ton Shays,
Numbers One, Four, and Five, were
assigned to the mountain.

With Edwin Mower's death in 1956,
family members were unable to keep
the operation going. The picturesque
and antiquated mill ceased operations
abruptly on July 1,1960. Three months
after the mill closed, a New York
company purchased all assets, including
the Town of Cass and the
railroad. A scrap dealer was subcontracted
to dismantle the line. It seemed
that the logging town and its.
railroad had reached a bitter end, but
other forces were at work.

In August 1960, Russell Baum, a
Pennsylvania railfan, initiated an effort
to save the railroad. He reasoned
that the Shay locomotives and the logging
track could become a big tourist
attraction. A small number of state
businessmen and rail enthusiasts, in
spite of opposition, formed the Cass
Planning Commission, and before the
end of the year, the governor signed a
bill bringing Cass into the state parks
system.

But an old logging railroad doesn't
become a tourist line overnight. It
took until 1963 to get Shay engines
Number One and Four into working
order and a few flat cars equipped
with safety rails and benches. The
first year of operation proved all skeptics
wrong. Twenty-three thousand
people flocked to this remote rnountain
town and its backwoods logging
railroad. In 1987, approximately
77,000 people rode the trains to Whittaker
Station and Bald Knob. State
park officials say they expect to top
100,000 in the park's 25th anniversary
year.

Dr. Deike is a logging historian,
railfan, and resident of Cass. Smith is
publisher of Locomative [sic] and Railroad
Preservation magazine.